Read on Twitter
I& #39;m seeing a lot of nonsense about boosting the immune system lately, so here& #39;s a far-too-long thread on what "boosting the immune system" really means and why 1) you can& #39;t and 2) it& #39;s not smart.
Classically we regard the immune system as being a network of molecules, cells, and organs responsible from protecting us against pathogens (disease-causing microbes). But how does it do that?
The immune system has to have a means of being able to tell apart self-antigens from nonself-antigens so that it doesn& #39;t respond to the wrong ones. This is called self-tolerance and it& #39;s much trickier than you may be aware.
Self-tolerance has two layers: central tolerance and peripheral tolerance.
Central tolerance is where your B and T cells (cells that respond to specific antigens and then rapidly divide into clones in an immune response) are pre-programmed not to respond to self-antigen.
Central tolerance is where your B and T cells (cells that respond to specific antigens and then rapidly divide into clones in an immune response) are pre-programmed not to respond to self-antigen.
There are some problems, however. Your immune system has to be able to recognize self-antigen to function. Viruses hide within your cells and their antigens get presented on proteins called MHCs. T cells have receptors designed to recognize MHCs and the bound peptide.
However, MHCs also have to present self-antigen peptides with them. Viruses can completely disrupt cellular metabolism and basically stop antigen presentation. However- when cells don& #39;t have enough MHC proteins, they get destroyed by natural killer cells (no gif for this one):
In other words, a cell that doesn& #39;t present self-antigen is treated by the immune system as a cell that& #39;s been infected with a virus and killed.
To deal with this the immune system has evolved to only permit cells to escape their central tolerance education if they fall within a goldilocks zone of being able to recognize self-antigen but not respond strongly to it. The vast majority of cells fail this checkpoint.
However, sometimes self-reactive cells (cells specific to self-antigen) fall through the cracks and you end up releasing potentially dangerous cells with the potential to cause autoimmunity.
It& #39;s okay though! Autoreactive cells alone do not make an autoimmune disease. Many people have antibodies against self-antigen which never end up developing into an autoimmune disease.
That& #39;s because you have a second layer to self-tolerance called peripheral tolerance. Peripheral tolerance is arguably more important given how error prone central tolerance can be. Most of this boils down to a really important cell called the regulatory T cell (Treg).
Some of the T cells that respond strongly to self-antigen in the thymus (where central tolerance happens) become regulatory T cells. The regulatory T cells are responsible for controlling the immune system when it gets too eager to limit tissue damage.
They can also be induced in the course of an immune response. If a particular cell gets especially eager, the Tregs can even kill it: https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1074761309001976?token=1F27BECDAAD5962595AF71041FF8EFDBBE1839218D087F4F1C0E5283315350155585DFBE6B54FBF3B5F0DB23C42732E9">https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd...
Tregs are very busy cells and they work very hard to prevent your autoreactive cells from causing disease. Don& #39;t make their job any harder by trying to boost your immune system.
There is only one immune booster I will ever endorse for the general public:
Thanks @DrJenGunter for being amazing and supplying me with the perfect gif https://twitter.com/i/status/1165641748703399936">https://twitter.com/i/status/...
Thanks @DrJenGunter for being amazing and supplying me with the perfect gif https://twitter.com/i/status/1165641748703399936">https://twitter.com/i/status/...
Vaccines are not a general immune booster in the way that snake oil salesmen market their products. They enrich cells specific to antigens on disease-causing microbes so that if you encounter them you don& #39;t get sick.
They are also extensively evaluated for safety.
They are also extensively evaluated for safety.
